Well, you're asking me how many people make the specific mistake she made, and I have to agree that it's not that many. But it also was not a horrific mistake. She didn't endager anyone's life, she was filling in at something that wasn't her job — it's not like she dropped the newborn heir to the throne on his head or…

You with your logic and your notions of agency and personal responsibility.

People keep making that mistake because they want to make the narrative of "Nurse kills herself as a direct and clear consequence of radio prank" make sense. And it doesn't make sense. So they put her into the central role, because they can then imagine that the exposure to press and humiliation must have driven her…

Being trapped in a torture dungeon = unfathomable circumstance.

I don't agree with your claim that no one has sympathy for Jacintha. People do, and have repeatedly expressed it. The question is whether blame can be easily assigned to the prankster DJs and radio station. Jacintha was not in a dungeon, her name had not been made public before the suicide, her voice was not on the…

You do realize that there's a difference between inflicting violence on yourself and having it inflicted on you?

Word. This is what happens when people don't read Aristotle.

This is the point. Nobody could ever have predicted this. The station deserves every bit of blame for violating a person's medical privacy. Even if they didn't think they'd succeed in doing that, it was a reasonable possibility given their actions. But suicide? Of the woman who passed on the call, not even the one who…

Um, since there's been a difference between murder and manslaughter. I don't know my legal history that well, but the law does actually differentiate between intentional crime and criminal negligence. It doesn't mean people aren't responsible for their actions, but there is a difference.

Um, she didn't release information. She put the call through and another nurse talked to the DJs. She was on as receptionist. It was an honest mistake. There was no need for suicide.

I'm with you. The issue is not laying blame, it's the automatic assumption (not here on Jez, but on another site I've read) that there is a direct one-to-one correlation between the prank and the suicide. It is so ridiculously out of proportion that it seems hard to believe. The only way I can understand it is if the…

Nothing if you're in junior high. If you're a grownup, things get more complicated.

She's unlikely to dissolve a parliament just because she's having a bad day, but she does technically have that power, as well as to assent to bills and summon parliament. If all goes according to plan, a clump of cells in Kate Middleton's uterus will wield that power one day, might ignore it, might abuse it, but in…

It's kinda great, to be honest!

Yeah, and doctoral titles got swept up with that too. Which is why here (i.e., in Germany), your Dr. is part of your legal name. I'm not German, so I'm not sure to what extent that applies to me, but my train discount card does have the title on it...

I was a card-carrying monarchist as a teenager. Now I find it all disgusting. The idea that so many people would be excited about an embryo destined to hold executive power over their country just because. Of course I wish them all the best as people, but neither of them have done anything truly extraordinary. (Though…

And then there are the do-it-yourself glamour shots... I'm seriously thinking of trying out some drag queen tricks too. (Too much watching of RuPaul's Drag Race.)

I'm the same way! I'll do elaborate makeup looks, in fact, and then take them right off!

All you really need to draw on are the eyes...

Young women during the 16th century died from lead poisoning from their face makeup... Lizzie did *not* start a healthy fad.